Reports say that it can hit a top speed of 40 mph, but it seems that the fun is relatively short-lived, as the drone runs out of juice after about 8 minutes. While it is flying, the drone appears to be incredibly agile and fairly easy to control. The built-in camera isn’t top end, but it looks more than sufficient for general surveillance use.

While we love quadrocopters and all of the cool acrobatics they pull off, there’s something awesome about a drone that can hit the ground at speed, roll, and take off again without incurring any serious damage.

Anyone care to start work on a civilian prototype with a longer battery life?

Does anyone see how it can remain stable? It looks to be a single fixed pitch rotor, and I can’t see any stabilization rotors or anything. How does it steer? How does it not just spin in circles due to the single turning rotor?

Hate to suggest it but it could eject batteries as they are being used to extend flight time. My understanding is this is common w/the military if weight is a problem (i.e. foot solders with several pounds of batteries).

So hitting pause a few times whilst it’s sitting on the table at 1:46 you can see that there are servo sarms for 8 control surfaces. 4 planes just below the rotor and another similar 4 at the base of the central column.

The thinner flaps around the upper ring a third of the way down also move, but it appears that they’re loose and just providing some form of stabilisation. Would people agree?

Also around 1:57 it looks like it’s just built from some light balsa wood or similar, I reckon you can see what looks like the grain.

hmm it could be interesting to see an automated guidance system using either tracker, or maybe a special ir reflective paint fired by high powered paintballrifles, mark your criminal and keep surveilance on them

@steve They aren’t allowed a full army as part of the surrender agreement, because once they start they don’t know how to stop you see.
And there are large groups ion japan that want an army again and who have an aggressive attitude in general and I really think it’s better if they keep their army at a reduced size as agreed.

Have just been testing an R/C heli (15 gram ultra lightweight) and these often put out nearly half their weight again at full power.

I did come up with a number of ideas for extending flight time, mail the usual address for this as it would take too long to list them here.

Also you can get stable hovering with a single rotor by thrust vectoring, essentially the flaps are adjusted to apply an equal and opposite force to the precession at all power settings using a MEMS gyro as the feedback system.

the force needed isn’t as much as you would think because all you are doing is altering the air path; think of it as a FET altering the flow of current.

I saw a functionally identical design to this at e-fest (http://www.gpe-fest.com/) a few years ago. It’s basically an RC airplane with the center of gravity very far back so it hovers stably and a control surface has been added opposite to the rudder. Granted, the ball design is neat, but this isn’t exactly groundbreaking considering that it’s a state funded project.

As far as flight time, if it was scaled up it could hold a much larger battery pack without gaining too much weight in the airframe.

Inside the roll-cage you’ll find a propeller which is used for thrust, and eight separate wings for control. It can also hold a camera and sensors. Obviously, we need to shove a Kinect in this thing, stat.

According to a report from the robot’s developers, most of the components were sourced from Akihabara — a geek-heaven shopping complex in Tokyo. Akiba is filled to bursting with shops that sell electronics, gadgets, video games and anime junk. The components only cost about 110000yen (£600).

For all those who wonder why only 8 minutes of flying. It’s typical for a battery powered RC helicopter to fly around 8 – 15 minutes (note that RC plane can fly a lot longer). The more battery the longer you can fly, but the weight also increases and that gives you some other complication (stronger air frame, more expensive power system, slower, etc.)

I don’t see anything new with this set up. The RC plane guy doing this for many years already (see the Yak hover video above). Many guys at RCgroups.com have done this type of helicopter. The only difference in this article is the sphere case wrapped around the heli. I guess it also contributes to the short flight time because of the increase weight and drag.

Honeywell Electronics has something over here in Albuquerque, too. You can watch it on their tiny little flight-line/test area from behind their building. After hearing them running it on their test harness, I could swear I had heard the distinct whirring in the air over my neighborhood across the valley last winter. I thought it was a blimp at first but couldn’t spot it in the sky, then it faded abruptly. Anyway, yes, Honeywell has build a cool tool for aiding in the destruction of privacy for the “lesser” classes (politicians and the insanely wealthy need not be concerned).